Kontron announces product support for new VESA standard for display description data

DisplayID™ solves the problem of inhomogeneous

Eching, Germany, February 26, 2008 – VESA DisplayID Task Group member, Kontron, announces product support for the recently approved DisplayID specification, a new VESA standard that defines display data structures.

Former specifications did not provide complete descriptions for embedded display interfaces. The Display-ID standard solves this problem. Kontron therefore sees Display-ID as the standard of choice for all new embedded display developments.

The intention of Display-ID is to unify the display data structure that until now has developed differently in the fields of CE, IT and embedded computing and resulted in proprietary extensions. Since display technology is becoming increasingly diverse whilst the markets continue to converge, a universal standard for every field is needed.

“Display-ID will be implemented directly in the Intel® Embedded Graphic Drivers for Embedded Intel® Architecture-Based Chipsets. This will ensure excellent market penetration for PC technology”, declares David. C. Panziera, Software Product Marketing Engineer at Intel®. “It will thereby generate genuine interchangeability between displays and the computer modules, boards and systems from different manufacturers."

“For us, it is important that the new Display-ID standard is suitable for embedded computing applications and meets all relevant industrial needs. Depending upon the application area, we need to be able to work with different displays. The inflexible nature of former specifications as well as diverse proprietary extensions from individual manufacturers made things difficult for our customers. Display-ID now provides us with a manufacturer independent standard to meet all current requirements”, explains Dirk Finstel, CTO of Kontron’s Embedded Modules Division.

Supported products
The first Kontron products to support Display-ID are the UGM-M72 Graphics-On-Module (Universal Graphics Module Standard) and the computer-on-modules with the latest Intel® chipsets based on the COM Express and ETX standards. Display-ID has already been implemented on the ETX-PM, ETX-CD, ETXexpress-PM and ETXexpress-CD computer-on-modules. All other new designs with AMD or VIA processors also will support Display-ID.

Display-ID datasets tool
Kontron has already developed a tool for the automatic generation of Display-ID datasets. The tool will make the implementation of datasets even easier by quickly and automatically setting fixed values as well as automatically calculating different timings. The basis for the Kontron Display-ID Tool for automatic dataset generation will be the “implementer’s guide”. The Display-ID support also will be incorporated into the COM Express™ Extension.

What is the feature set of Display-ID?
Whereas the established standards focus on describing PC monitors, Display-ID is universally applicable. Compared to their fixed 128 Byte or 256 Byte footprint, Display-ID has a new, variable format. A Display-ID dataset consists of several blocks that can be combined according to the functionality of the display system. Each block describes a logical part of the display system such as interfaces, display device technology, timing details and manufacturer information. The variable format is future-proof since new blocks can be added at any time. In addition to their variable number, the blocks themselves have “built in” flexibility. The header length of each data block as well as the length of each field can be variably defined and are thereby no longer limited to a specific number of bytes. As a result, the Display-ID dataset is often smaller, as demonstrated by the current dataset for LVDS which needs only 81 bytes instead of 128 or 256 bytes.

Display-ID has no affect on hardware and electrical connections: Display-ID is written into the EEPROM for the display and is read via DDC-Bus. However, there is a big difference for developers when it comes to implementing a new dataset, since only the data that is required has to be entered. Datablocks that are not needed can be simply left out. For example, color and transfer characteristics which do not apply to the embedded industries. This significantly reduces the time needed for implementing a dataset.

This new standard has been developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). Several companies including Intel® and Kontron have supported the development of the new specification through their work in the Display-ID Task Group.

For more information on Kontron products that already support DisplayID please visit http://www.kontron.com